1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a method and apparatus to purchase contents, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus by which users can purchase contents by using a portable storage medium or via a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In FIG. 1, items (a) to (c) respectively illustrate a rental shop, a user, and a conventional reproducing apparatus, respectively, in a conventional method of renting or purchasing a movie stored in conventional portable storage mediums such as Compact Discs (CDs), Digital Video Disks (DVDs), Blue-ray Disk (BD), Video Cassettes, and the like.
Referring to FIG. 1, a user rents or purchases (hereinafter both referred to as a ‘purchase’) a conventional portable storage medium, in which a movie is stored, from a rental shop (a), and reproduces the movie by using a contents reproducing apparatus (c) of the user.
However, the aforementioned conventional method of purchasing a movie is inconvenient to users since the users have to go to a movie rental shop, search for a desired movie from among various movies, and purchase the desired movie storage medium. Also, due to a limited quantity of movie storage media, if all of the movie storage media of a desired movie have been purchased, users cannot purchase the desired movie.
Also, in some cases, movie contents, which are stored in the conventional portable storage mediums such as a CD and are to be sold, may be a series or may include a preview of a movie to be released at a later time, and thus, users may desire to watch the sequel of the series or the movie corresponding to the preview while watching the movie contents. In this case, the users have to memorize the titles of the movies while watching the movie contents, and visit a rental shop at a later time to purchase the sequel of the series or the movie of the preview.
However, recently, portable storage mediums using a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) or a flash memory have been developed, and these new portable storage mediums are characterized by mass storage capacity and capability of both writing and reading data compared with conventional portable storage mediums. Thus, it is much more convenient for a user to purchase such contents as a movie using these new mediums than the conventional mediums.
As another alternative to the conventional method of purchasing a movie, a method of purchasing movie contents via a network has been provided. That is, users download movies at home by using a Personal Computer (PC) or a digital television (TV), which are connected with a contents provider via a network, and watch the movies. Such a method, having many advantages as compared to the conventional method of purchasing contents by using the conventional portable storage mediums, however, still has disadvantages or problems that need to be addressed. For example, optical communication network by which massive contents can be downloaded without interruption is not yet widely supplied to the general public, and similar to the conventional method of purchasing contents by using the conventional portable storage mediums, such an alternative method does not provide a convenient method of purchasing the sequel to the movie, or the movie of the preview.